UK Nationals in the EU: Rights

Debate between Roger Gale and Kate Green

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale]

I think we can accept—well, maybe we cannot, but I accept from personal knowledge—that most Brits who live in France outside Paris and in Spain outside Madrid, as the majority do, are not necessarily over retirement age but are retired or semi-retired. Some are working online. There is a significant number of them, and they are frightened people.

I have become involved because many years ago, under the last Labour Government, I had to fight a battle to secure payment of disability living allowance as an exportable benefit to UK citizens living in the European Union. That decision was taken by the European Commission. Shamefully, and in spite of the best efforts of the then Minister Jonathan Shaw—a very decent man and a personal friend—it took us a long time to secure the payment, but eventually it was made. Within the European Union, there is an understanding that certain benefits are exportable, mainly the disability living allowance—now the personal independence payment—attendance allowance and carer’s allowance. Mobility allowance is not a health benefit and therefore not exportable. That was another battle that we fought but lost.

A significant number of UK citizens are receiving those benefits throughout the European Union. Contrary to popular belief, they are not rich retired people living on yachts in Cannes sipping gin and lying in the sun. Generally, they have worked in the United Kingdom all their lives, paid their taxes and national insurance contributions and for whatever reason—perhaps health, or the climate—found it desirable to live in the Mediterranean or in France. They have no flexibility in their incomes, which have fallen quite dramatically because of the fall in the pound, as many of them are living on United Kingdom state retirement pensions and little else.

If I say to hon. Members that those people live in genteel poverty, I mean it. It is genteel because they have a roof over their heads and they own their property, but having sold up and moved out from the United Kingdom, they are now faced with a choice between a rock and a hard place. Do they stay and face losing perhaps their healthcare and certainly their exportable benefits?

[Kate Green]

I agree absolutely that there are no guarantees that UK citizens will continue to receive those benefits after exit, because many benefits depend on reciprocal arrangements. Is the hon. Gentleman saying, as I would, that the UK Government should now make it clear whether they intend to continue those benefits for UK citizens in the rest of the European Union after Brexit, irrespective of what the EU 27 decide in respect of their nationals?

[Sir Roger Gale]

I entirely support the Government’s line in respect of the need for a reciprocal deal.

[Kate Green]

So, no.

[Sir Roger Gale]

Not just no—it happens to be the case that many people who live in mainland Europe could not, for example, secure private healthcare insurance at their age, in any meaningful sense. That may not be the case for the 3 million people from the rest of the European Union living in the United Kingdom, many of whom are working. There is a disparity between the two causes.

I chair the all-party parliamentary group on frozen British pensions. As hon. Members will know, significant numbers of elderly people who paid their taxes in the United Kingdom all their lives have moved to Canada, Australia or New Zealand and found their pensions frozen at the point of departure because we have no reciprocal agreement. That is why this point is so important. We do have a reciprocal agreement with other countries, such as the United States, so pensions there are uprated. This results in the ludicrous situation in which a pensioner living in Canada on one side of the Niagara Falls has a frozen pension, but another on the other side of the falls, 200 yards across the river in the United States, has an uprated pension. There is a real danger that if we cannot reach a bilateral agreement with the 27 other member states, we could find ourselves with pensioners moving to or living in other countries in the European Union with frozen pensions.

These are significant issues. There are a significant number of frightened people who want and need answers urgently. I am aware that I have taken up a lot of time, and I apologise. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these matters in person with my hon. Friend the Minister.